Truth Be Told
by Wilusa
Summary: Given the news he's just received, Joe should be pleased and relieved. Instead, he's deeply troubled. I initially intended this as part of my main universe, but dropped the idea.


DISCLAIMER: _Highlander_ and its canon characters are the property of Davis/Panzer Productions; no copyright infringement is intended.

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_August 5, 1998._

"I'm sure you did the right thing, Mac," Joe Dawson said firmly. "It's always a mistake to let mortal law deal with Immortals.

"Remember Kalas? And Killian? Whether they're locked up for a year or a half-century, they'll be back, nastier than ever. And an Immortal who fights dirty once will always fight dirty. You have to kill them when you get the chance, and thank God you were able to."

"I suppose so." The voice on the phone was still troubled. "This guy Marek really puzzled me, though. If he'd held a grudge all that time, why didn't he come after me sooner? I'm not that hard to find."

"He was waiting for a good opportunity. Maybe he'd heard...rumors, that made him think you'd be an easy mark now." Joe knew he didn't have to spell out what he meant.

"You're right," MacLeod acknowledged. "Of course you are.

"So I killed him, and that's over and done with. Will you be back in town soon? I'm spoiling you rotten, Watching myself and phoning in reports."

"Soon as I can manage it," Joe assured him. "May be another month or so. But at least I won't be as worried as I have been."

That wasn't quite true, and he was glad the Highlander couldn't see his face.

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After talking for another ten minutes, they signed off. Joe turned away from the phone and brought his computer to life.

_I should be relieved. Hell, I __**am**__ relieved. This is what I've wanted, prayed for. Richie's been dead over a year, Ahriman is gone...Mac had to resume taking heads._

_And I didn't lie to him, not about anything of substance. I never will._

_I just held something back, something that might have upset him. And what I'm remembering can't have been right. Watchers make mistakes._

His recalling the damn thing was a fluke. A report from a remote corner of the world, about an Immortal who'd never been a major player in the Game. It had only caught his attention because of Briggs' description of the guy who'd taken the head.

He found the file again and reread it.

Briggs hadn't made any changes or corrections.

And he still hadn't identified the victor in the fight. _Unknown_ _Immortal. Male Caucasian - about six feet tall, slender, with short brown hair and a prominent nose. Apparent age, mid-thirties._

He'd included a note: _I thought he looked familiar. But I checked our database of known Immortals, even the sketches of some we've never been able to photograph, and didn't find a match. So I must have imagined I'd seen him before._

Methos had lucked out again.

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By Joe's count, this was the third time in recent years that he'd been reported as an unknown Immortal. He'd been spotted when he killed Kristin, and again when he fought Steven Keane. Fortunately, he hadn't been photographed during any of these encounters.

During the Horsemen crisis, Cassandra's Watcher had merely seen a man she took to be a patron enter the dojo - and duck out, understandably, when MacLeod and Cassandra began having a loud quarrel. She hadn't realized the same man was at the abandoned power station where Mac and Kronos had their aborted swordfight. And thanks to Mac's skill at eluding tails, and Joe's decision not to alert his colleagues that someone might spring "Evan Caspari" from that mental hospital, the Watchers hadn't seen Methos in Europe. They'd never even seen Silas; they were unaware he'd existed. All they knew was that Mac had somehow killed both Koren/Kronos and Caspari.

Joe was sure that if the Watchers learned "Adam Pierson" was Immortal, they'd deduce his identity as quickly as Mac had. With better reason: once they thought about it, they'd know he hadn't changed physically in his ten years with them. Meaning he couldn't be a new Immortal; he'd been one all along.

An Immortal might have joined the Watchers and wangled the assignment of searching for Methos in the hope of taking his head. Other Watchers could, in all innocence, have given him valuable leads. But if he were getting nowhere, he wouldn't have stuck with it for ten years. The only explanation of his investing that much time was that he was really enjoying huge success.

Pierson didn't want Methos to be found.

Didn't want _himself_ to be found.

Fortunately for him, most Watchers working in the field had little contact with those in Research. And it never occurred to them to check the database of current and former _Watchers_ when trying to identify an Immortal.

_But someday, Methos, you'll run into one who met you as Adam Pierson, and remembers._

_You still know who's Watching whom..._

_Would you avoid killing an Immortal whose Watcher would recognize you? Or would you kill Immortal __**and**__ Watcher?_

On reflection, Joe thought it might have been Briggs who'd lucked out.

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Briggs. Just a kid, no older than Joe's daughter Amy. The Immortal he'd seen Methos kill had not, properly, been his assignment. He'd latched onto the guy who'd killed his assignment.

Methos wouldn't permit a fallen foe's Watcher to attach himself to him. Briggs had tried. And the cagey old-timer - while he might not have seen him - had needed less than an hour to give any possible shadow the slip.

But most Immortals were easy to follow. They never suspected the Watchers' existence.

_They don't know us...and we can't know all of them, not by a long shot. Briggs was wrong about the one Methos killed. It happens more often than we like to think._

Methos, of course, had probably known his opponent. But for all the contact Joe had with him, the oldest Immortal might as well be on the far side of the Moon.

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Joe brought up a new screen and started to type.

Entered a few lines, and stopped. Wiped sweat from his brow.

_This is ridiculous. Why am I letting it get to me? Mac knows who he killed!_

_Like I've been saying for months, he __**had to**__ use that sword again. Had to kill again._

But he couldn't shake his gut feeling that Briggs hadn't been wrong. And that he himself was at a crucial turning point in his life.

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He decided not to report what MacLeod had told him.

Or tell MacLeod that six months ago, in New Zealand, _Methos had beheaded Devon Marek._

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The End

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_**Author's Afterword:**_ I initially planned this as part of my main universe. But I've decided that developing the idea - that Ahriman would only be defeated if MacLeod was honoring a pledge not to take heads at the actual turn of the millennium - would be more bother than it was worth.


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